Usage of Old Slavonic and Church Slavonic

[Delodephius]

Thanks for that Slovak, and nice choice of clip too, that Moravian hymn is very good, I have heard it many times since you first brought it to our attention way back.

How well versed are you in Glagolica? Can you write sentences?

I've had complete mastery of the Glagolitic script for over 8 years now. It is a bit harder to read but I have no problems writing anything in it.

[julie]

Slovak/Anomaly/Tomas beautiful hymn , thank you

[George S.]

Thanks for that slovak what is done to preseve things of old do they just die out or are they passed on .I'm amazed that you have mastered the whole glagolithic scriptKnowing modern macedonian is that of any benefit to understanding the glagolithic.(that pleasant hymn is still echoing in my ears)it reminds me of latin hymns in church.

[makedonche]

Slovak/Anomaly/Thomas

Ok, so the name Slavs didn't creep in. It was a name applied by Romans to tribal confederations that existed north across the Danube and Sava rivers about from the 5th century. These tribal confederacies together with the Avars, who were a super-confederacy of various tribes and tribal confederacies and who used the language of the Slavs as their Lingua Franca, invaded the distracted Roman empire and periodically took away control over more and more Roman territory. The political entities they formed were referred to by Romans as Sclaviniae. The Slavic tribes and the Avars took advantage of the Roman-Persian war of the 620's and took most of the Balkans from Roman control and established the Sclaviniae as far as the Peloponese. The language of the rulers of the Sclaviniae was taken as the prestige dialect and was soon accepted by the local population, which spoke a similar dialect or either Vulgar Latin or Greek. The language of the inhabitants of Macedonia came to be counted as a Slavic language henceforth. In the 9th century Cyril and Methodius took the Solunian dialect as a basis for the Slavic liturgical language (today called Old Church Slavonic) though they added the needed vocabulary to accommodate Moravian liturgical traditions. Cyril invented a script today called Glagolitic which was based on the decorative Greek minuscule with some innovations. Once Glagolitic fell out of popularity, it was replaced with the Greek alphabet in Bulgaria, but few letters from Hebrew were added to represent sounds not present in the Slavic languages. Today this script is called Cyrillic, a name applied because of mix-up of Russian origin because in the Middle ages Russians thought that Cyril invented the script. It is believed that the creator was actually Clement and hence it is sometimes called the Clementine script instead of Cyrillic, mostly among students of Old Slavonic.

So to summarize:

1. The name Slavs was a name of political entities i.e. tribal confederacies that took control of most of Roman Balkans, was used by Romans to refer to the tribal states that they established called Sclaviniae and afterwards applied to all inhabitants of those regions.

2. Macedonian language was originally a Palaeo-Balkan language and was very close to the Balto-Slavic languages. Once the Slavic tribal elite established itself in Macedonia their languages merge, were hybridized, and formed a dialect of the Common Slavic language. The language of the Macedonians was hence simply called Slavonic ("You are from Solun and all the Solunians speak pure Slavonic" - Emperor Michael, 862 AD).

3. There is no such thing as a Macedonian alphabet, old or new. The alphabet that St. Cyril created, Glagolitic, is a heavily decorative and modified Greek minuscule script and the Cyrillic alphabet created by St. Clementine in Bulgaria is nothing more than an expanded Greek alphabet with a few Hebrew letters.

We'll be putting this little theory to the test!

[Soldier of Macedon]

Som i look forward to your prehistoric thread how far are you going back?

I will try and get it posted up tonight or tomorrow.

Knowing modern macedonian is that of any benefit to understanding the glagolithic

Knowing the phonetics of Old Church Slavonic/Old Macedonian would be more beneficial.

I've had complete mastery of the Glagolitic script for over 8 years now. It is a bit harder to read but I have no problems writing anything in it.

That's excellent, I hope that one day I am as well versed in it too, it is one of my goals in life. Would you say that learning it poses greater difficulties than Cyrillic (aside from the obvious, eg: familiarity)?

We'll be putting this little theory to the test!

The overview provided by Slovak is a sober analysis, and I agree with what he has posted. The only thing I would probably elaborate on is the following point:

There is no such thing as a Macedonian alphabet, old or new. The alphabet that St. Cyril created, Glagolitic, is a heavily decorative and modified Greek minuscule script and the Cyrillic alphabet created by St. Clementine in Bulgaria is nothing more than an expanded Greek alphabet with a few Hebrew letters.

With regard to Glagolica and Cyrillic, although they weren't created specifically for use by Macedonians, they were created for the Old Church Slavonic language - which was initially based on the Macedonian variant from Salonika. And although their creation was not a concerted Macedonian initiative, they were created by people from Macedonia who spoke the language as a native tongue and can rightfully be considered as ancestors of the Macedonian people.

One could also say that there is no such thing as a Greek alphabet, and that it is merely a Phoenician script brought in by Semitic invaders from Asia which was modified and had a few vowels added on to suit the phonetic principles of the Greek language. Ultimately, all European alphabets in common use today stem from Phoenician, but they came in use generally through a Latin or Greek medium.

[Delodephius]

In Medieval literature Glagolitic is usually referred to as the Illyrian alphabet, simply because the Croatians, or in the west usually called Illyrians, were the only one's who used the script for over a thousand years. Glagolitic is still used in Croatia today and the largest collection of Glagolitic texts is preserved there (one of the largest collections of texts in any Slavic language actually). Despite the fact that Glagolitic was invented in Macedonia, it was quickly abandoned everywhere but in Croatia/Illyria, and so I think it should be called the Illyrian alphabet simply based on prevalence of use and tradition.

The Cyrillic alphabet on the other hand was created in Bulgaria, in the Preslav school, and was adopted in the Ohrid school a few decades latter.

Even though St. Cyrillic Constantine and St. Methodius Michael were native speakers of Slavonic from Macedonia, they were nonetheless Romans (Byzantines) and identified themselves as such.

The history of Old Church Slavonic is intertwined between all Slavic lands and peoples. No one can claim full heritage because different phases of its history occurred in different regions.

[George S.]

Slovak thank you very much keep it up we are learning more & more it's all fascinating.
What do you think of greek claims that the slavs came on the sixth or 7th century & killed off all the macedonians & we are just slavs not macedonians.I personally cannot accept that concept what is your view?

[Delodephius]

That is a very oversimplified view that originated in a misconception and ignorance. It was devised in a time (18-20th century) when people thought that nations are solid constructs, that they were unique and distinct from all other nations. Reality is completely the opposite. There are no clear borders between nations. If we apply our modern knowledge of ethnology, history and logistics to the 6-7th century we could see that the Slavs were only a small number of people, mostly tribal nobles and warriors, who allied with the local usurpers and separatists established themselves in Roman territory. The population was not killed of, it only came under new management.

[George S.]

There is a reference to the macedonian language that it is slavic.Couldn't it be just macedonian Why does it have to be called slavic when the slavic hordes were illiterate & adopted the macedonian language.Greece claims this smear that we are not macedonian but slavic.If that's so if we apply the same logic that the so called slavic hordes went to greece to bulgaria,albania & turkey.Then if we apply the same logic the slavic hordes did no more damage than in macedonia & we would have to classify greece and the other countries as SLAVIC too.
I think considering what happened calling macedonia a slavic country is unworthy as it is more like a smear tactic.Remember that the russian court used it a tool to say that a country was slavic.When macedonia was partitioned in 1913 one of the things the serbian side did was to indoctrinate the macedonians & tell them they should forget the macedonian history of a glorious past but they should take glory of the fact that they were slavic.The greeks similarly labelled macedonians as slavophones or slavmacedonian.
Also it became even more apparent of the slavic smear by greece when macedonia became part of yugoslavia.Myself i consider myself only a macedonian i don't need prefixes or suffixes to tell me i'm less of a macedonian.

[Delodephius]

I don't think you understand what Slavic means. It is a linguistic denominator, like Italian being a Romance language, or English being a Germanic language, or Arabic being a Semitic language. Macedonian is a Slavic language. You can't deny that because it is simply a fact. Now, whether the language group should have been named differently and not called Slavic, well I would think not. The name Slavic was used by Slavic speakers themselves since the very beginning of their written history, and by everyone else too. If some Macedonians want to call this language group differently, fine, that's their own choice, but the rest of the 400 million speakers of Slavic languages won't change the name. My people are even proud of being Slavs. It's your choice what you do.

[George S.]

Slovak what i'm saying is we don't need prefixes or suffixes of who we are.Years ago i mentione it to peter hill proffessor of slavonic studies that this constant reference to macedonians being slavic has stuck with us & our enemies are using it against us.With due rspect a lot of people refer to us as not macedonian but just slavic which is incorrect.Use of the slavic prefix has been to say we are not macedonians which is untrue.When i told peter Hill this he said it's a good point he never thought of it like that.Also our enemies like greece say we are slavic & we don't have any connection with
the ancient macedonians.Which is untrue as we are macedonian & we are related to the ancient macedonians.

[Delodephius]

People don't understand that there was no migration of the Slavs. And they think that since there was a migration that all the previous inhabitants of Macedonia were eliminated. This is not true of course.

I can draw a parallel to be applied to the Greeks. In the 2nd BC century Greek cities were conquered by the Romans and in the subsequent centuries the Greeks started calling themselves Romans and have been doing so even after the fall of the Roman Empire (until the Westerners re-christened them back into Greeks/Hellenes). So by that logic modern Greeks are not the descendant of the ancient Greeks because they are really Romans and should be either called that, or their name should be prefixed, like Romanogreeks or Roman Greeks, etc.

[George S.]

Good points Slovak.In the process the greeks can't decide who they are.Now they say they are Macedonians.They have an identity crisis & like you say the modern greek has no connection at all.So they are just liars & spouting a lot of untrue propaganda.
Is there something that you want to let us know of current developments in the study of old slavonic language or church slavonic.

[Delodephius]

Not much. Going through the literature the only thing worth mentioning now is the debate whether newer copies of Old Church Slavonic texts should be included in the OCS canon, like from the 13th century onwards. They are excluded because they are not really OCS but Church Slavonic and have features of local languages. However all of them have been reconstructed into their original form, as much as that is possible.

[lavce pelagonski]

The Ss. Kiril i Metodi are Macedonian and lol the Cyrillic Alphabet was created in Ohrid